China seeks education link with San Diego

Dr. Lilly Cheng, right, leads students in counting in English during a graduation ceremony Friday at San Diego State. Children from China celebrated their summer school in San Diego on Friday with a small graduation ceremony in the SDSU Language Lab.

Peggy Peattie

Dr. Lilly Cheng, right, leads students in counting in English during a graduation ceremony Friday at San Diego State. Children from China celebrated their summer school in San Diego on Friday with a small graduation ceremony in the SDSU Language Lab.

Dr. Lilly Cheng, right, leads students in counting in English during a graduation ceremony Friday at San Diego State. Children from China celebrated their summer school in San Diego on Friday with a small graduation ceremony in the SDSU Language Lab. (Peggy Peattie)

Jack Wu, 7, center, and other students from China were given Godiva chocolates as a gift when they graduated from their summer school in San Diego on Friday with a small ceremony in the Language Lab at San Diego State University.

Peggy Peattie

Jack Wu, 7, center, and other students from China were given Godiva chocolates as a gift when they graduated from their summer school in San Diego on Friday with a small ceremony in the Language Lab at San Diego State University.

Jack Wu, 7, center, and other students from China were given Godiva chocolates as a gift when they graduated from their summer school in San Diego on Friday with a small ceremony in the Language Lab at San Diego State University. (Peggy Peattie)

As China continues its path toward superpower status, its educational leaders are looking to San Diego and other cities abroad in forging partnerships that will reshape Chinese classrooms — from kindergarten to college.

Still recovering from the Cultural Revolution that shut down China’s universities, the nation’s government officials are working to improve the quality of higher-education offerings. At the same time, China is striving to prepare a new generation of K-12 students for the economic opportunities that await them.

Since 2010, China has sent more college students overseas than any other country. It is establishing international education collaborations and exchange programs at a dizzying rate.

The latest in a string of delegations of young Chinese children arrived in San Diego last week to attend summer school with local students and tour area universities under an arrangement with the Confucius Institute at San Diego State University and the Barnard Mandarin Chinese Magnet School.

The goal is to promote an exchange of language and culture. The Chinese students — as young as 6 years old — also came with cash and extravagant shopping lists for items such as Coach and Louis Vuitton bags, Nike shoes and Godiva chocolates.

“I call them the little emperors and empresses,” said Lilly Cheng, managing director of the Confucius Institute. “All the made-in-China stuff is from these people who are entrepreneurs. They all have a single child. They all want their children to get the best education they can get, and they want them to come here.”

Faculty members at Chinese universities are eager to form exchange programs in the United States, in part to learn what it takes to make a top academic program.

This fall, the University of California San Diego will open the Fudan-UC Center on China through a partnership with Fudan University in Shanghai, a venture that’s been billed as the first such initiative by a major Chinese university.

The center will serve all UC campuses by providing lectures, symposia and access to databases for researchers and students at the system’s 10 campuses — from San Diego to Davis.

Meanwhile, China has given New York University once-inconceivable access to its country by allowing the institution to operate a full, degree-issuing liberal arts campus in Shanghai next year. “Classes will be conducted in English and in accordance with the principles of academic freedom associated with American colleges and universities,” according to a news release issued by N.Y.U.

Other American universities have similar ventures in the works, including Berkeley, Yale and Duke.

At the University of Southern California, an institution known for its large enrollment of international students, China surpassed India three years ago as the largest source of foreign students, said dean of admission Tim Brunold.

Six years ago, USC admitted about a dozen Chinese undergraduate students. This fall, about 150 Chinese undergraduates and some 200 graduate students are set to start classes there.

“China is definitely the story,” said Brunold, who regularly travels to Asia to recruit students. “You almost can’t turn a corner in China without running into somebody from another (U.S. higher-education) institution.”

Fudan University in Shanghai will send a faculty member to help staff the new center at UC San Diego in the fall. Others will follow under exchange arrangements.

The relationship is positioned to give China new insight into California’s top system of higher education. It also promotes the San Diego region and California as China increases its presence in the global market, said Peter Cowhey, dean of UC San Diego’s School of International Relations/Pacific Studies.

“If San Diego is to be a prominent player in the Pacific economic region, it has to have high profile in China,” Cowhey said. “Establishing a major partnership with a major Chinese university located in Shanghai is a very good way to raise the region’s profile in China.”

As universities worldwide are competing to “internationalize” amid an increasingly global economy, this venture is considered a coup for the UC system and UC San Diego in particular, Cowhey said.

Fudan University, host to the UC Education Abroad Program, is ranked 11th in academic reputation by the Quacquarelli Symonds 2012 Asia University Ranking of about 200 Asian institutions.

“This is a remarkable opportunity to build a China-studies platform for both Chinese and American scholars,” Lin Shangli, vice president of Fudan University, said in a statement. “It will form a network for communication and international academic exchange on the study of China.”

The Fudan-UC Center plans to work closely with UC San Diego’s 21st Century China Program, which serves as a clearinghouse for research and scholarly engagement with China.

It will house a library of books and journals produced by faculty at Fudan and databases on China’s economy and society. Planned activities include lectures and studies on China involving faculty from various UC campuses.

The collaboration will start as a five-year effort, but organizers expect the center to become permanent. Fudan will pay the salary of its professors; the UC system will not provide any direct funding for the center’s creation but will offer administrative and academic resources.

Cowhey said the initiative will enhance an already robust base of Chinese experts at UC San Diego, improving the university’s relationship with China.

“The relationship between the U.S. and China is too big to fail. Neither country can afford to let it fail,” he said. “The ability of two great peoples to understand a world with each other depends upon personal networks of trust and goodwill. Universities are an important lubricant to making the systems work.”